I sometimes wish I were Zamasu so Hearts would DESTROY me too.
5 notes
·
View notes
i think the thing that's funny about gohan is that if you take canon at face value, you have to accept he doesn't "have trauma." canon is fundamentally more interested in big intense emotions and drama than the smaller moments (although it still has those, and they can be really touching). this is not a deficit! dragon ball is a series where someone you love dies, and you scream so big you get superpowers. it's great.
so taking canon for what it is, gohan has experienced traumatic events, but he doesn't have any trauma from them. it has had no effect on him.
but if you want to understand him as having trauma, then the obvious reading is that gohan takes on the "just a guy" genre of having a trauma. the kind where you cannot get him to admit that he even experienced trauma, let alone that it did anything to him.
being dumped in the woods for six months should have affected him developmentally? sure, it was scary and weird at first, but then it was kind of fun, really!
watching people die at age five should have affected him? no, it's okay, most of them came back. it's sad about the ones who didn't, but it's important to mourn your losses and go forward in honor of their memories!
the world being put on his shoulders when he was eleven might have messed him up? that was hard, but it did have to be him. and he messed up, but his dad told him not to feel bad. his dad wouldn't want him to dwell!
everyone who put him in dangerous situations loved him, and they're his heroes, and gohan really was uniquely powerful, and the world was really at stake, so he did uniquely have to be involved. no one did anything wrong. besides, it was kind of hard, but nothing is wrong with him. he's just a guy.
he's aggressive about protecting his normal life and had a hard time even knowing what "normal" looked like, but he's just a guy. he didn't want pan to see people being killed, but there were no consequences when that happened for him. he's just a guy. his rage is something he avoids like it scares him, but his emotional regulation is great, really!
none of it had a negative effect on him. it was hard sometimes, but he learned a lot of things, and he's fine now. he's just a guy.
you will never get any of the big, obvious signs of trauma out of gohan (again: canon is pretty content that he's happy and well-adjusted!), but you can find trauma responses if you want by leaning into that. that's the kind of trauma response where people don't admit it to themselves, where they constantly minimize and excuse what happened (they love me, they never wanted to hurt me, therefore i can't have been hurt). the kind of trauma response that only comes out in weird leakages, in little comments and odd irrational behaviors—and then, occasionally, all at once in blinding moments of uncharacteristic emotional outbursts.
but that's not a big deal. it's just how his power boosts work, he guesses? it's a saiyan thing, probably!
don't worry about it. it's all okay. none of it was that bad.
he's just a guy!
238 notes
·
View notes